Why I Love Singlehood: (9 page)

Anonymous:
i effing hate this game. this one and monopoly. there’s nothing fun about spending a whole freaking day *thinking* about a *game*. where’s the fun in that??

Which then provoked:

Normal:
You hate Scrabble *and* Monopoly???? What kind of communist are you? Please don’t tell me your idea of a good game is Hungry Hungry Hippos. And btw, what’s your beef against capital letters? That’s *my* deal breaker.

SVU:
Dude, I love Hungry Hungry Hippos. No joke!

Some people’s ideas of deal breakers rather frightened me. I had been expecting the typical toilet seat up, toothpaste cap off, toilet paper roll facing up or down, and other such bathroom hygiene issues. I also felt relieved that I was not as shallow as I thought. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder if my expectations were too high. Shaun had his own idiosyncrasies, of course (such as having to organize the pantry according to the size and height of cans and boxes), as did I, no doubt. What made anyone bearable to live with?

I called Olivia.

“Hey, Liv, what’s your deal breaker?”

“My what?” she replied, sounding frazzled. I could hear pots and pans banging in the background.

“Your deal breaker? You know, what could David do that would send you packing?”

“Aside from cheating on me?”

“Well, I wasn’t going for anything so dramatic. You know, like leave the seat up or track mud on the carpets or something.”

I heard Tyler and Tara bickering while Olivia tried to referee. “I don’t really know, Eva. Things that seem horrifying in the beginning are rather inconsequential when you’re cleaning up your kid’s puke and taking him to the emergency room at three a.m.—WOULD YOU GIVE HER BACK HER ELEPHANT AND BE DONE WITH IT ALREADY??”

“Ugh, thanks for filling my head with that image.”

“That’s family life, kiddo.”

Olivia hadn’t called me kiddo since I was, well, a kid.

“Look, I’d love to talk more, but I’m trying to clean up from dinner and get the kids settled with their homework. Everything OK?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Just before she could say good-bye, I asked if Tyler was OK, being that she mentioned emergency rooms and “him.” Everyone was healthy, she assured me.

“Talk to you later,” I said.

“Sorry,” she said before we exchanged I-love-yous and goodnights. Just as I hung up the phone, I heard a last cry for help from Tara and a final reprimand from my sister.

I sat on my deck, looking out at the horizon, watching the sunset. I couldn’t for the life of me picture being with someone long enough to warrant the kind of complacency with which marriage seemed so filled. Moreover, I wasn’t sure I wanted it. What was the middle ground? I wondered.
Was
there a middle ground? Was there a place between unrealistic expectation and complacency in a relationship? And if there was, did it have a shelf life?

Maybe Shaun and I had gotten complacent before we got to marriage. Maybe that was what falling out of love was all about. Or, at least, the end of romance.

Summertime didn’t signal a lull in business at The Grounds—in fact, the Originals and some of the Regulars would hang out almost all day, communing in the café when they couldn’t stand the excessive heat or the crowds at the beach, the overflow of tourists, or visitors from the Triangle and Triad looking for a getaway without leaving the state. On mild, sunny days, half the clientele would sit outside the café. Additionally, I started making ice cream with Cookie of the Week pieces in it—we always ran out before three o’clock.

Since the spring semester ended, Shaun stopped by almost daily for an iced coffee. As always, I’d sit at his table and chat with him, talking to him about almost anything but philosophy, the Jeanette, or weddings. Our conversations felt comfortable, just how they had always been when we were together. Many times we wound up laughing, playfully touching each other’s arms as we recalled an anecdote from our respective or collaborative pasts. Or we’d challenge each other to television and film and music trivia (I beat him at
The Munsters
; he beat me at
The Godfather
). I looked forward to seeing him each time, my heart doing a little jig whenever he came in. Minerva, however, would glare at us from behind her medical books; I knew this because I could feel the lasers from her pupils boring a hole into my spine.

One day after Shaun left, I fetched a giant macaroon for Minerva and accidentally smacked the plate on her table with enough force to make Car Talk Kenny glance up from his reading. (Unbeknownst to Norman and the others, or so I thought, I often gave Minerva at least one free cookie per week.)

“So, you gonna do that every time he comes here?” I asked.

“Do what?” she replied, not looking up from her notes or acknowledging the cookie. Minerva hides her true feelings about as easily as one hides a carton of sour milk in a refrigerator.

“You know what. You’re like a cat ready to pounce. If your eyes threw daggers, there’d be several protruding from Shaun’s chest right now.”

She still didn’t look up.

“It’s not his fault he’s getting married,” I said. “So it didn’t work out for us. It happens. Life goes on. Why hold a grudge?”

Finally, she picked her head up, her horn-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, as if she realized for the first time that I was sitting there.

“That’s not the problem,” she said.

“Then what is?”

“He doesn’t deserve your friendship.”

“Why not?”

She tried to speak softly. “Because you don’t just wanna be his friend. I can see it on your face when you talk to him, Eva. You’re practically begging him to
see
you, and it’s just not happening. You don’t need that. You don’t need him to sit there blindly, throwing it in your face.”

“Throwing what in my face?”

“The fact that he’s got you wrapped around your finger, and you both know it.”

Anger swelled inside me like a slow whirlpool.

“You are way off base,” I said, trying not to raise my voice.

“He’s taking advantage of your feelings for him just so he can feel good about himself, and you’re letting him.”

“Min, you know I love you, but sometimes you’re just too damn judgmental for your own good. I mean, I appreciate that you care and don’t want to see me hurt, but this isn’t a black-and-white world.”

She looked hurt. “I am not judgmental.”

“You’re telling me he’s blind. Well maybe, you know, he’s just not that into me, like the book says.”

Minerva dropped her pen and looked at me, incredulous. “Oh God, you didn’t, did you?”

“Didn’t what?”

“Read
He’s Just Not That Into You
. Please tell me you suffered a minor brain injury. Please tell me you bumped your head on a shelf one night or you couldn’t sleep and needed something to dull your senses.”

“It actually makes some good points once you get past the condescension and banality.”

“When? When did you do this to yourself?” she demanded.

“Um, I don’t remember.”

I’d taken a copy home from the reading room the day after my date with Nick from New Bern but hadn’t actually read it until a couple of weeks ago, after I’d overheard Shaun mention the Jeanette to a colleague who’d joined him for an iced coffee, referring to her as his fiancée. I finished it in two nights. I even made notes in the margins.

“So then why aren’t you cutting ties with him?” Minerva asked.

“Because we’re friends. And as long as he wants to be friends, then that’s fine with me. And may I point out that
he
’s always been the one who wanted to remain friends. He never once said that we should part company.”

As I said the words, I could actually hear them saturated with rationalization. What’s more, I could picture the
He’s Just Not That Into You
authors saying something in response like, “If you want a friend, get a dog.”

“And that’s exactly what worries me,” Minerva said, her voice hushed. “He knows how you still feel, and he’s taking advantage of that.”

“I don’t ‘feel’ anything,” I said in defiance. “Can’t you be friends with your ex? Is there a constitutional amendment banning it? I mean, really, who says you can’t?”

“And how does the Jeanette feel about it? Does she even know about you?”

“Who cares?”

Minerva opened her mouth in disgust. “Oh, that’s a great attitude. Eva, put yourself in her shoes: imagine that you’re Shaun’s fiancée and he’s still friends with his ex-girlfriend of three years—his former,
live-in lover
. Would
you
be OK with it? Wouldn’t you be wondering
why
Shaun insisted on remaining friends with this woman? Furthermore, would you trust a woman who said, ‘Who cares what she thinks?’—
she
meaning
you
?”

Shitters.

I had never seen it from that point of view before. Maybe Shaun wasn’t the one who was blind. Minerva was right. Blatantly right. But my ego was too proud, too wounded, and feeling too foolish to tell her so.

I looked past her table.

“I’ve got a customer,” I said, and stood up to attend to him without saying anything more to Minerva for the time being. She went back to her books, calling out as I walked away, “By the way, the macaroons are perfect today.”

Later in the afternoon, after Minerva and most of the Originals had left, Car Talk Kenny remained perched in the corner with a J. D. Rhodes novel. As I straightened up the end tables, I heard him utter, “She’s right, you know.”

I stopped in mid-straighten, and looked at him. He revealed only his eyes for just a moment.

The first time I met Car Talk Kenny, rather, the first time I’d
noticed
him, it had been one of those days where the espresso machine went on the fritz, the gourmet beans were sold out, orders got mixed up, and the line never shortened.

“What can I get you?” I’d asked as soon as he’d stepped to the counter.

“Hi,” he said. “How are you?”

“Good. You?”

“Liar,” he grinned.

“Excuse me?”

“How
are
you?” he repeated.

I blinked. “Tired,” I said with a weak laugh.

He gave me a look that said
that’s more like it
before saying, “I can imagine.” He then ordered a plain café au lait and a maple nut muffin at my recommendation. As I handed him his muffin—warmed just because I thought he’d like it that way—and finally asked him how he was, he smiled and said simply, “Better.”

I’m pretty sure he was the one who slipped a five into the tip jar on the counter that day, although he never copped to it. He’d been a Regular ever since. Kenny was one of those people to whom you can only ever tell the truth, and I found myself always glad to see him; somehow, just knowing that I
could
tell him I felt like crap made me feel inherently less crappy. There were still days when he’d quirk an eyebrow if I said I was “great, thanks” with a little too much fervor, or chuckle to himself if I emerged from the kitchen covered in flour and all the markings of a battle lost against the mixer and still managed to say I was “fine.”